It's easy to put together. It's even easier to find something to slather it on.

“More people need to make their own ssamjang for barbecue,” Momofuku ringleader David Chang told me a few months back while researching my cookbook, Koreatown. “You make that shit from scratch and it’s amazingly good.”

Indeed, David Chang, that shit is good. But before we can expect people to start making it from scratch, we have to tell them what exactly it is.

Ssamjang is the crimson-brown spread you will find, typically in a small dish, on the table of most Korean barbecue restaurants. For some back-of-the-napkin etymology, ssam is the Korean word for “wrapped” and jang means “thick sauce.” So by definition this is a flavorful spread to be slathered on lettuce leaves that are then wrapped around the hunks of grilled meat, kimchi and any of the banchan (the Korean small plates that arrive before the meal) you want to include. The flavor of ssamjang is complex, both salty and a little nutty. With sweetness in there. And spice. Umami? Yeah, it’s that, too.

When I first started eating a lot of Korean food, I started to notice that ssamjang was everywhere. Not just paired with grilled meat, but served with a basket of crudité (raw carrots, squash, mild and juicy green Korean peppers that are close cousins of the Anaheim), grilled mackerel, steamed pork belly or spooned atop rice. It was an ever-present condiment at the rustic soup and barbecue restaurants I found myself frequenting, and I started putting it on everything.

Now, a firm clarification (I’m typing this extra-hard into the keyboard.): Ssamjang is not to be confused with gochujang, a fermented pepper paste that is foundational in Korean cooking. Ssamjang isn’t doenjang either (doenjang is basically gochujang without the spice). Your head might be spinning with all this jang talk, but it’s important to point out that ssamjang is a paste made from many things (doenjang and gochujang included). It’s sold at Korean grocery stores and hard to miss in it’s green packaging (no matter the brand, the green one is always ssamjang). And it's not necessarily bad. But like many aspects of the Korean kitchen, the homemade version is fuller in flavor and, really, just better. My recipe, made with walnuts, is below—but the great thing about homemade ssamjang is that you can customize it. So sub other nuts or seeds as you see fit.